Cascading Memories
by Silver Oasis
Summary: Vincent returns to Lucrecia's Falls to seek forgiveness for all that he believed he'd done. He finds himself thrown into her memories, and reliving the lust, sorrow, and joy that she'd felt the last year of her life. One-Shot.


Disclaimer – I don't own anything from FF7, I don't know why I even bother putting these.

So, writer's block for my other story in progress, that's always fun. This idea randomly came to mind while I was trying to fall asleep, so here it is.

Ok, so, Lucrecia is possibly OOC, I wasn't sure how to make her act around Vincent, and it's my first time attempt writing her. Please feel free to point out any mistakes and such, and if Lucrecia is very OOC, please tell me how she would actually act, heh.

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To begin, I should say that my life has been a series of unfortunate events, one dark memory after another, that is, until I met AVALANCHE. A magnificent group of people that I didn't desire to get to know in the beginning, but I won't dare to go into that, not now. 

There's a certain memory that's still one of the most prominent in my mind, unscathed by the passing of time, unmisted, untouched, and I know that it's one that I'll never forget. It took place exactly one year, two months, and fifteen days from when we defeated the most horrid being the planet has ever known, Sephiroth; her son.

I had stood there, before her falls, the water colliding with the slightly eroded rocks powerfully, and then had crashed down into the small lake bellow. A sheet of cascading liquid, unharmed by pollution, holding a certain purity, a virgin purity like none else. It was innocent, and it was untainted, one of the few things in this world that wasn't.

For two days I listened to the water, the sound of it pummelling downward, and only that, accompanied by my twisted and malformed memories, were present for companionship, if they even applied. I didn't eat, sleep, or drink, I sat at the edge of land before it lowered into the purified water, and I lost myself in thought. My memories, my thoughts, I gathered them, and with that I gathered up courage.

Courage indeed, it's what I needed if I was ever going to enter that cave and face her once more. Her half-dead figure resided in that cavern, which was bathed in a cool darkness, and in the prominent scent of mould. It was a disgustingly bitter smell, and as it danced at the edge of my nostrils, I would cringe, and snap my jaw shut, suppressing coughs at the back of my throat. It was a horrid place, and yet it was oddly beautiful. The way the sunlight cooed itself through the sheet of water, and filled the front of the dark cave in an almost azure glow.

Beautiful, yet hideous at once, a contradiction that was so true I couldn't bare to think about it.

I saw her then, and I can't say that I was unaffected, for that wasn't even remotely the case. Her beauty was the same as I had remembered, identical, and even then it stunned me. Words were caught in my mouth, memories washing up from the inky black area of my mind, and tears burned my bloodstained eyes. Bloodstained eyes, bloodstained soul. Tainted.

I also couldn't say I felt nothing when I saw her, my body was filled with so many emotions that I thought that I would spontaneously combust. Everything I had ever felt, filled me like a burning liquid, filling to the point where I had no more room inside me, and it burst onto my physical form. My flesh tingled with a burning sensation, goose bumps rising, and my exhausted figure couldn't help but spasm in overload. I felt such a love that it hurt everything I was, and made something deep inside me quiver, and I felt angry, depressed, and so much more, so many emotions weaved together so tightly that I couldn't have even begun to separate them.

Her flesh, beautiful and pale, only appeared to be an apparition, as I saw the darkness of the cave behind her, through her. All I saw was the misted vision of her, like a half-forgotten memory dragged up from the darkness of the past. She radiated sadness, a depression that rivalled mine, and I swallowed the large lump that had formed in my throat. Her eyes, two cobalt blue orbs, were focused on me, and for a moment, she didn't speak. For a moment, we stood in silence, staring at each other, and I don't know what she felt, but she looked almost stunned that I had returned.

I took a step towards her, and she whimpered, almost inaudibly, before taking a step back. With that step my body ached, knowing that she didn't want me near. I had already known this would happen, for it had happened before, but it didn't make the pain any less real.

"Don't… don't come near, Vincent," she said, her voice quiet, a mere whisper, and urgent, but it still sounded sweet to me.

I paused, my pose suspended in time, and I didn't move, didn't even breathe as I watched her. The numbness of my senses that had accompanied the overload of emotions faded, and the distinct scent of mould collided into me. I stepped back, and waved my arm and claw, as if trying to repel it automatically, but soon stopped when I realised that waving my arms like an imbecile wasn't stopping it. A coughing fit dared to emerge, but I bit it back, and grunted softly, refusing to let it ensue.

I gazed around the cavern, and though I can't say that I saw much, what I did see… saddened me. The walls, some of which were dimly alit by an azure glow, were an off black, almost the shade of obsidian, of night itself. Those obsidian walls were glazed with grimy mould, spread on like butter, and it was repulsive, disgusting beyond all else.

The floor was damp, kissed with a sheet of water that had washed in from the tumbling waterfall, but this water wasn't pure like that of the water outside, it was mixed with gritty dirt, and other things I didn't desire to make out. It was only the sapphire glow that made it seem beautiful in the beginning, but things aren't always what they seem. I learned that the most difficult way possible.

With that, one phrase bombarded my mind, that she was too good for such a… horrid fate. She didn't deserve to be like a robin trapped in a rotting and moulded cage, bound to this hell for all eternity. No one deserved that… but least of all her.

Cobalt eyes met my face. "Why, why did you come?"

"Lucrecia… please, forgive me, but I needed to see you once more. I need… I need to be free, we both do. I need you to forgive me, although I don't deserve it. I don't know how else to cleanse my sins, I need your forgiveness for all I've done, if you can," I explained, words struggling to reach passed my lips, to be heard by her.

I needed her forgiveness, I needed to be free of at least that sin, the worst sin of them all. What I had done to her… all that had happened… it was on my account. I could no longer tolerate having her despise me for everything that had occurred.

"Forgive… you?" she asked, her voice still as quiet as a whisper, still barely audible even to me, and I didn't answer.

She seemed to dwell on it, though there was a flicker of disbelief on her face. I watched as her orbs fell to the damp floor, and certain things passed across her visage. Things I couldn't even begin to make out, things I couldn't even begin to understand.

Then she began to laugh, a bitter sound, almost angry, and I couldn't help but be filled with a sudden bewilderment.

"Freedom. You mentioned that we both needed to be free, but, Vincent, don't you see? I'll never be free. Jenova has poisoned all I am, my very soul, and this is where I'll forever be. This dark cave has become my prison, and my prison it'll always be."

The words were strangled in my throat once more, and I watched as she stared at me, filled with such anger and bitterness, it rivalled that of Sephiroth's. Actually, that had a sense of a sick irony.

I walked towards her suddenly, my movements quick and filled with an inhuman grace, and she stared at me, momentarily surprised. My metal boots clicked against the rock ground as I neared her faded form, and the clicks echoed through the cavern, the only sound that kept the room from being veiled in silence, aside from the crashing water outside.

She backed away slowly, and raised her hands, as if to ward me away, but it hadn't worked. I paused, inches away from her smaller figure, and her hands fell to her side. She began to inch backward, staring at me with large, wary eyes.

I reached over, overtaken by the urge, my control to restrain that urge finally snapping in two, and I tried to touch her. She was nothing more than a poisoned ghost, and had no real form, so my human hand fell through, but I felt… something. Like the faint feeling of water rushing around my hand, although the water felt more like pressured air, and I heard a gasp, but to this day I'm unsure if it was I who had made the sound, or her.

My body froze over, as if a bucket of ice had been poured over my head, and had sunk through my flesh, and into my very core. I was numbed of everything, my puzzled emotions, the persistent memories, and the distinct, sickening stench of mould.

My world went black, but I had not lost consciousness, not in the least. I felt… something, something creeping inside me, and suddenly it felt like my head exploded. Pain washed over me so intensely that screams had caught in my mouth, unable to break past my partially opened lips.

Then the pain seeped away, and I was standing in a room, looking a man… a familiar man. Hojo. I felt no anger, no nothing, there was barely even that glimmer of familiarity hovering inside me. He was smiling, a half-amused, half-something else, and he placed one hand on his hips.

"Why, Lucrecia is it? Seems as you're my new assistant," he said, smile never once wavering.

Something clicked in my mind, I was looking into her memories, I must have been, and I was seeing it through her eyes. It was the only logical solution to this interesting dilemma, though that solution wasn't exactly logical.

I gazed around the room, or rather, she did. It was… very white, I must say. Not ivory, no, it was a pure, unadulterated white. A desk, with papers, pens, and booklets sprawled about, a cream coloured filing cabinet, and a window indented into the wall. The window being the room's only source of light, dim as it was. It was very impersonal, no pictures, nothing to make it more _his_. I felt her intrigue as it ploughed through her, and her desire to learn more about this interesting man, who seemed to lack any affection for anything and anyone but his work.

Then I was thrown into another set of her memories, in another room, this one painted a rich emerald, it was a lab, filled with tables whose bottoms you couldn't see, as they were covered in gadgets and gizmos, papers, lab results, everything that you could ever imagine that would be in a laboratory.

Her high heels clicked against the off-white tiled floor as she walked across the room, bubbling test tube in one hand, clear liquid tainted amethyst partially filling it, and a sheet filled with test results in the other. A long wisp of chestnut brown tumbled into her face, and she sighed in irritation, wanting to push it back behind her ear, but having no hand to do so with.

She gazed at Hojo's back, the man clad in a wrinkleless lab coat, ivory dress shirt accompanied with a black tie, and matching dress pants. Always clean, never out of place. She almost admired him for that.

Trailing down his back were long unbrushed strands of ebon, tied up in a tame ponytail, although various strands that were too short tumbled into his visage. His glasses were raised up onto his head and he peaked into a microscope, staring at a specimen with a fascination that almost made her want to smile, a flicker of affection heating her insides.

I felt a twinge of jealousy that was not hers by any means, but mine, although I immediately pushed it back, knowing that it was neither the place, nor the time to be feeling such a useless emotion.

"Professor Hojo?" she said gently, and tilted her head curiously.

She heard him sigh, and he looked up at her, dark eyes searching her face with puzzlement. He then spotted the test tube and lab results, before smiling confidently. He stood up straight, and looked down at her, waiting patiently.

"Outcome?" he asked, before leaning back against the edge of the table expectantly.

"Positive, things are going as planned," she said, and I doubt that her words could have been filled with more joy.

This caused him to smile, though it was more of a slight upturn of lips than anything else, barely even classifying as a half-smile.

"Excellent, as I expected. Put the results on the table, I'll look at them when I'm finished. Put the tube in the test tube holder across from me, I'll observe it afterwards as well. Excellent indeed," he said, and his eyes darkened deviously.

She did as she was told, like a loyal puppy, but she took no offence to being ordered around. All she felt was a joy that he was pleased, and an increased unexplained affection for the man. She heard him walk out of the room, footsteps quiet, but audible, and her head snapped over inquisitively.

He merely left the room, not even bothering to give her one last thoughtful glance. She felt a passing disappointment, but quickly waved it away, telling herself that it was nothing personal, although deep down, she thought otherwise. Maybe he didn't like her, maybe she wasn't good enough to pique his interest.

There was a cautious knock on the partially opened metal door, and she looked over, cobalt eyes blazing with bewilderment, and there I was, well, my younger self. I was watching her with a expression I took as shyness, and I waltzed inside the room, hands digging into my navy Turk pants anxiously.

"Hello, Miss—" she cut me off.

"Please, Vincent, I thought I told you to call me Lucrecia," she said warmly, and I felt a smile tease her lips.

I felt her faint desire to befriend me, but even as she spoke to me, she thought of someone else, of a certain scientist that I could have never competed with. She felt for him what I had felt for her, what I still did feel for her.

"Lucrecia. How are you today, everything alright?" my younger self asked, midnight blue eyes fixated on her face.

Blue… I had almost forgotten that was the original colour of my eyes. Now they were a rich crimson, the colour of blood. Bloodstained eyes, of course. Ironic, as I had killed so many people so uncaringly, unquestioningly. I did the job, no matter whose lives it destroyed. It wasn't my problem. _It wasn't my problem…_

"Everything's just fine, actually, better than fine. Everything is working out splendidly," she said, and I felt her smile broaden. "How are you?"

As those words trailed passed her lips, that memory faded as well, and I sighed to myself, slightly irritated already. I didn't want to see these memories, I didn't want to truly see how she loved him, what had happened between them, what I would never experience with her. I didn't want to feel her realisations, her pain, her sorrow, her agony. I didn't want to feel the betrayal in the end.

I didn't want to feel any of it, but I couldn't escape. I was a prisoner in her mind.

Another memory, this time a flash of persistent lust kicked her in the gut. He pushed her against the wall of the room that I couldn't make out. It was dark, very dimly lit, but I suspect it was his impersonal office.

He kissed her roughly, lips colliding her hers violently, passionately. I felt her lips immediately bruise, and swell, and he kissed her again, more gently than that of the time before. He reached under her lap coat, and he grasped her waist yearningly, running his hands along the side of her body, as if memorizing every detail, burning it into his mind.

He paused, for a moment, and Hojo's dark eyes were a lit in a fire of lust as he stared down at her. A need so untamed that a gasp escaped her lips as she made out his painfully obvious emotion, and he pulled her towards him. He kissed her neck, pushing away her wild mane from her face, and her cobalt eyes rolled upward, gazing at the ceiling as jolts ran through her form.

Moonlight spilled into the room as the full moon was clearly visible through the room's single window. Moonlight that danced along Hojo's discarded lab coat by his desk, and ran along their flesh intimately, like a lover's touch.

I pushed away that memory as disgust and jealousy inflamed me, like the lust had inflamed them. Despite how I was currently in her mind, I felt my body shake, feeling so much at one time that nausea took its toll, and I felt the brief sensation that I was going to throw up. He touched her like that, he used her, and then he discarded her. Nothing more than a piece of trash.

Now we were inside the lab, and she was staring down at a slip of paper, joy raging through her form as she came to a realisation. She was pregnant, a fetus healthily developing inside her womb.

That sheer, untouched joy was crushed when another memory faded in the place of this one. This memory, however, was not filled with such happiness, but rather, sorrow.

Tears ran down her face quickly, as if someone had turned on a tap inside her eyes, and allowed the water to flow consistently. Her cheeks were graced with a sheet of salty tears, and her eyes were red, and swollen. Questions were running through her mind that it was almost difficult for me to keep up. How could even suggest such a thing? This was his child, their child. He was supposed to love them, not want to experiment on them.

She loved him so much. Didn't he love them? Didn't he?

She heard footsteps, the quick footsteps of my younger being, and I kneeled before her, my midnight sapphire eyes filled with anxiousness and worry for her. She told me what he had said to her, that Hojo wanted to inject Jenova, his experiment, into her, and into their precious child.

Black. The memory faded, and anger filled my shaking form. He used her, he never loved her, not like she loved him. Not like I loved her. I knew he'd used her before… but I never saw it, I never saw this.

Then came a portion of a memory, very hazy, very faded. It was of the injection. She was in the room I had been in, my younger form tired and bloody from experimentation, from the torture. I could see the pain glittering in my eyes, the unwavering pain, and I almost choked as I recalled it.

Another pain, one I had not experienced. A needle ripping through her flesh, and she gasped in pain, and struggled against Hojo, but she was too weak for him, weak from all the sorrow she had been feeling, weak from the pregnancy, weak from everything. His one hand held both her hands up over her head, and she was trapped, almost as if she had been shackled to the wall.

She felt the fluid pass down the sharpened needle, and into her child, their child, and she screamed. Screamed with the realisation that she had been a fool all this time. He had never loved her, he could have never truly loved anyone but his experiments. He had manipulated the love she held for him deviously, uncaring of what it would do to her.

And my younger self screamed, screamed as Lucrecia screamed, as tears poured from her eyes, as she suffered from her realisations, as she realised that her child would suffer from everything that had come to pass.

I knew that he had hurt her, not because he hated her, but because he hated me. He probably wouldn't have made it so horrible, had he not known that watching her suffer was worst than all of the physical suffering he could have evoked on me combined. I would have suffered through a million years of torture before I would allow him to do that to her.

It had been my fault.

Another memory, another series of sorrow as it ploughed through her. Her child was in the ninth month, she would be due soon, but that thought was not a joyous one. This child was to be born an abomination, already tainted from the experimentation.

She was sitting in the emerald lab, where she still resided most of the time, looking for anything the cancel out the experimentation. She found nothing, and she realised that it was nothing but a false hope. The child, a boy, she now knew, would be nothing but a toxic creation. Just another of his twisted experiments. After he was born, she would be discarded, knowing that he wouldn't risk her stealing him away like any mother would have.

A single tear fell from her left eye, and she raised the item in her hand before her sickeningly pale face. A broken shard of glass, dangerously sharpened, and she felt her heartbeat quicken, before she put out her wrist.

She had to save them, especially the child. The only way out was this, their only escape. She had to save him. Sephiroth was the name she had finally decided on for him. A beautiful name, designed for a beautiful child. He was bound to be beautiful after all.

She pressed the glass against her wrist, and she brought it down sharply, earning a gasp of pain, and a sharp intake of breath. Along her deathly pale skin was a single gash of crimson painted across her wrist.

Blood began to rush out, and it slipped down her bony limb. It dripped onto the floor, making the most disturbing sound I have ever heard in my existence, a stomach-churning splatter as it hit the tiles. Over, and over, the sound occurred, and she watched it, before taking the shard in her bleeding hand, and raising her opposite wrist.

It had to be done, she had to save them, she had to.

Then footsteps, and the sound of the door opening. She didn't look up, she just raised the bloodied shard of glass and placed it against her opposite wrist, The previously drawn blood was warm against her arm, and she braced herself, readying to slit herself again.

She heard the near-silent footsteps quicken, and a loud sigh, before a hand grasped her readying hand before she could even think to slice herself again.

"Ah, ah, ah. We mustn't do that now, Lucrecia. You're being very rash, and you're acting insane. Killing yourself and your own child, hardly a sane thing to be doing, my dear. Besides, if you're going to slit your wrists, do it properly and go up your arm, not across your wrist. It's more likely that blood loss will kill you that way," he sighed, and pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket. "What am I going to do with you?"

My heart was pounding as the memory receded. She wanted out so badly that she was willing to kill both herself and Sephiroth. My breath was trapped, and I found myself having a difficult time forcing myself to breathe.

My Lucrecia. The torture, the pain, everything she'd been through, I hadn't fully understood it until that moment. The last while of her life was so similar to mine, unrequited love, a sorrow beyond else, experimentation by Hojo, and now she was trapped. A prison in this cave as I was in my body.

Is this how everything was meant to end? Without happiness for either of us. Both our lives were ruined by one man, and now… now we lived a half-life, not really living, but not completely dead either. Then again, perhaps some people weren't meant for happiness. Perhaps we were one of those people, doomed for an everlasting sorrow. Doomed to be trapped.

I waited, bracing myself for a rush of another sorrow-filled memory, my insides hollow from the ones I'd previously been exposed to, but the next memory never came. Nothing did for a long while, and I stood there, suspended in a time between reality and dreams, perhaps in a sort of Limbo.

Then she appeared, still beautiful, still radiating sorrow, and now I understood why. She was standing only inches away, we were in a cavern, but it wasn't real, and I was still trapped in something more than reality. She no longer seemed like an apparition, but as real, and as flesh and blood as I was. A single crystal tear escaped her startling blue eyes, and it trailed down her cheek.

"I… saw your memories, so vivid and… and I didn't want to. You want my forgiveness for everything you think you've done, but how can I give forgiveness when there's nothing to forgive? I understand you now, just as I hope you understand me, but, Vincent… you haven't done anything," she said, and her voice was thick, as if sobs were dancing on the edge of her lips, and she was refusing to give in.

I didn't answer her, I just stared, disbelief at what she'd said.

"You didn't make me what I am, despite what you think. Hojo… I loved him, I still do after everything. Maybe I always will, and you loved me, but I never took the time to notice, or to care. Not that it would have made a difference, I was blinded," she paused. "You didn't do any of this, Vincent. We were friends once, believe me when I say that you can't blame yourself for me any longer. It was my own doing, and Hojo's."

"Lucrecia—" I was cut off, and she shook her head.

"Vincent, don't. Don't say anything, and especially don't argue with me. I'm going to ask for one favour, and I hope you do as I ask," she took a pause, and I watched her patiently. "Don't ever return here again, I don't want to remember what I saw from your past, I already have my own to remember over and over. And, don't dwell on me any longer, please."

"Lucrecia," and as I spoke her name, and shook her head, and I noticed her wince. "What?"

"Jenova, I feel her… she's coming," but as soon as the words passed her lips, her form faded, and all that was left was a shadow.

She shadow laughed, and hovered above the ground. A very feminine laugh, smeared with cruelty and a sort of bitter amusement. I could feel her watching me, despite her apparent lack of eyes. I could feel her desire to harm me, to suffocate me, and to steal my supposed eternal life from my hollow form.

She glided towards me, and I took hold of my weapon, Death Penalty, the gun's obsidian metal was cool as it caressed my hand. I felt a certain familiarity with it, as it had been used many times over my long journey, and I readied it. My aim was for what I believed was the centre of her head, and I shot with impeccable accuracy.

It was as if the bullet had shot through thin air, and all it hit was the back of the cavern wall, cracking through rock, and causing the sound to echo through the cavern. and she laughed once more, but said nothing. My weaponry had no affect on her dark form, she was more than mortal, an experiment, a being all her own.

I felt Chaos scream through my head, and I resisted the urge to throw up my mental barrier. Chaos wasn't of this world either, he was created by something other than the Lifestream, a life force that couldn't be described as anything but the spawn of evil itself. As a final resort, I let Chaos take me.

Skin tore, muscles snapped, and bones broke, and all of them reknit themselves to form the creature, Chaos. Violet hide, thicker than that of a metal plate, claws long and deadlier than a set of daggers, and horns stronger than diamonds. The ultimate killing machine. The ultimate evil.

He attacked the shadow, and swiped his claw, his movements inhumanly quick, so quick that it took Jenova by surprise, and she was unable to dodge the creature. I watched through his eyes as he tore through the shadows, and somehow managed to come away with inky black blood. How do you attack something that appears to be nothing but air? How does it bleed?

Questions, always questions, always many of them, but Chaos ignored the constant questioning, and attacked uncaringly, his bloodlust and rage drove him, persisted him, and that's all he felt. Nothing but rage and bloodlust. That's why he was the perfect killing machine. Any other emotion was as foreign to him as aging was to me. He didn't question, he just did, and that's why I feared losing control of him.

Attack, another, and another. Movements so quick, so much blood spattered around the area, painting the off-grey floor in black. The beast spun around deviously on the back of his heels, and nailed Jenova with its tail. Never once did he give her the opportunity to attack.

Another swipe, another scream that sounded like nails on a chalkboard, and more inky blood. She finally found the opportunity to counterattack as he paused for a split second, and she swirled around us, as if capturing us in her grasp. She began to close in on us, and the pressure that surrounded us, the sudden pain made the beast cry out in agony, and made me cry out in his mind.

He repelled, and forced her back, before digging his dagger-sharp claws into her form. He released his final attack, the most powerful of them all, and I can't say that I recall what happened, for in that moment, I blacked out. All I remember is coming back and seeing that Jenova was defeated, and slowly fading away, dissolving into nothing.

Chaos panted, but he didn't fight as I called him back, allowing myself to become master once more. His bloodlust was temporarily sated, and he was content for the time being. I was in control once more.

Our forms switched once more, and though the process was painful, I was too used to it to even wince in agony. My clothes were ripped and torn, bloodstained and caked with mud, demanding a good wash and mending. I was panting, my heartbeat moving a speed that should have been impossible for a human… but I wasn't human. I was more than that.

I had returned to reality, the stench of mould had returned, still as disgusting as ever, and the waterfall's sound had returned, soothingly echoing through the cavern. Lucrecia was there, and she stared at me in disbelief, shaking her head as if it weren't possible. It couldn't have been possible.

I had done the impossible. I had defeated Jenova.

Her movements were hesitant as she made her way towards me, and she came to a sudden stop little more than a foot away. She stared up at me then, cobalt eyes glazed with unshed tears of an emotion that I couldn't make out. I believe it was something crossed between inexplicable joy, gratefulness, and a puzzlement beyond all else.

"She's… she's gone… Vincent," and then I heard her whisper something, "I… I'm… free."

I know Lucrecia never loved me, I know that she never could, not in the way I loved her. Not in the way that loving her is what made my heart beat, what made me want to live, and also made me want to die. It contradicts itself, that's quite true, but also in truth, there would be no other way to describe it.

She kissed me then, her lips were cool to the touch, and solid in a way that told me that momentarily, she was more than just a ghost. It was chaste, a mere brush of her strawberry lips against mine really, but I treasured it. As quick and chaste as it was, it caused my world to dissolve, and all I saw was her, her beauty radiant in the way that I had always remembered, her eyes an icy cobalt, like the cascading water of the waterfall.

"_Maybe there is freedom for us._"

Then she disappeared, her image drifting away into the black of the cave, and she was no more. I had freed her from the prison she had been trapped in for over thirty years. I released her from her hell, and I released myself from mine. I could be free, finally.

Even though I know she never heard, I answered her. "Perhaps there is after all."

She could never have loved me, but I loved her, and until the day that I died, if I ever would die, I would love her.

* * *

Constructive criticism is greatly appreciated, tell me if there's something that would make my writing better. I'm striving to improve it, heh. 

And if anyone should review, thanks in advance XD


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